Natalie McGettigan reviews ‘The Irish Garden’ by Jane Powers, with photographs by Jonathan Hession (Frances Lincoln £40.00)
This handsome book, features almost 60 Irish gardens, from Powerscourt and Altamont which need no introduction to the less familiar Oakfield Park in Co Donegal and Heywood in Co Laois.
Although all the gardens covered are worthy of note, Powers laments the fact that low visitor numbers, the inevitable consequence of a small population, make it difficult for owners to fund maintenance of their plots. Her contention is that Irish gardens are unlike any others in the world. The older ones, made while Ireland was under British rule, contain elements of Englishness, yet are specific to this island.
It is impossible to touch on all the gardens she mentions in this review, but some details she picks up on are worthy of note.
Farmleigh, although respectful of its original nineteenth-century origins, also contains work from contemporary sculptor Brian King. Chelsea Gold Medal winner Mary Reynolds has made Bunchloch (‘Foundation Stone’), a grassy landform with a granite bowl at its centre and concentric ripples representing the pathways of nine granite ‘planets’.
In Cork, despite Bantry House’s temperate climate, it provides a challenging site since the ground rises steeply from the coast into a rocky hillside. From 1820, Viscount Berehaven turned the challenge into a triumph, employing hundreds of men to reshape the land into seven terraces. On the other side of the house, he overcame the challenge of the steep gradient with the construction of a run of stairs known as the Stairway to the Sky. However, these embellishments were designed for instant ‘wow factor’, with insufficient foundations, with the result that much has not survived the test of time and the current head gardener faces a constant battle to hold back the encroaching West Cork vegetation. Although the garden has inevitably changed from the Viscount’s vision, the imposing geometry is still impressive as it becomes furred over with a coating of moss and ferns.
Birr Castle is home to the world’s tallest box hedge. In addition, it boasts over 40 champion trees and the current owner, the 7th Earl of Rosse, is aiming for 200 new plantings each year. This garden has seen over 100 years of constant and knowledgeable planting. The Earl’s wife was the daughter of Colonel Messel of the renowned Nymans garden in West Sussex and links between the two gardens are strong with regular plant exchanges.
A garden which was put together over the space of only two years in the 1990s, yet looks as if it has been there for centuries, can be seen in Fanore, County Clare where Carl Wright has made Caher Bridge Garden. In it, Carl has chosen to echo the arches of the bridges which span the river, so circles and semicircles appear throughout, giving the garden coherency.
In the chapter on Follies and Fancies, Powers singles out Larch Hill Arcadian Garden, near Kilcock in County Kildare, once the flax farm of the estate. In 1780 a ferme ornée was created, an ornamental farm set in a utopian landscape. Domestic animals which would ordinarily have been accommodated in basic conditions were housed in decorative gothic pens. Although it had all but disappeared down the ages, the current owners were able to restore it and its many follies with help from the Great Gardens of Ireland Restoration Programme, among others, and once again, cattle and sheep are in evidence.
Corke Lodge, between Shankill and Bray in County Wicklow, is a delightfully theatrical garden. It was created by the architect and furniture designer Alfred Cochrane. Although it does boast a massive cork tree, the garden gets its name from the Irish word ‘corcach’ which means ‘marsh’. The land here was originally waterlogged but has since been laboriously improved. Taking the existing woodland as his starting point, the present owner has designed the space to look as if there was a much more ancient and classically formal garden being consumed by the rampant laurel trees. Plants were chosen solely for visual effect – bold-foliaged Phormium, bamboo, Gunnera and ferns and showy-barked trees such as birch, Luma apiculata and Acer griseum.
In the chapter entitled ‘Fields of Dreams – where gardens grow from fertile imaginings’, the author has a special admiration for Lorna MacMahon’s Ardcarraig in Co Galway, which she deems to be the hardest-won garden of all those she features. This two-hectare parcel of land has a thin skim of poor, acidic soil over glacial granite. In the lower parts, the plot dips into a spongy bog which regularly floods. Despite the challenges, Ardcarraig is peppered with interesting trees and shrubs, including a rarely-seen Tasmanian Athrotaxis selaginoides conifer.
In ‘Paradises Reinvented’, Powers singles out Co Donegal’s Oakfield Park. In a picturesque landscape which appears to borrow from the period of Humphrey Repton, yet was created just 10 years ago, businessman Sir Gerry Robinson and his wife have planted many thousands of trees including over 160 varieties of oak. Sir Gerry, whose father was a carpenter, is keen for the demesne to live up to its Oakfield name once again. He has inherited his father’s woodworking skills and has made numerous constructions around the gardens, including a summerhouse, a boathouse, several bridges and all the boardwalks that run over the wetlands. In the previously-neglected walled garden, paths have been reinstated using old Ordnance Survey maps.
The wonderfully atmospheric photographs taken by Power’s husband, Jonathan Hession compliment his wife’s writing and together they make up an extremely handsome volume that chronicles what are currently the best of Irish gardens. ✽
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